Fruit Mahjong

PotatoJam names its lineage outright: Fruit Mahjong is built on Shisen Sho, the variant also called Pao Pao or Connect 2, where matching tiles are linked across a flat field instead of being lifted off a pyramid. More of the same shape sits in the full Kids list.

The faces are fruit and vegetables rather than suits, which is why the field reads so quickly — a strawberry beside a strawberry registers faster than two near-identical character tiles ever will. Boards in this family usually clear a couple once an open route can be traced between them, so position weighs as heavily as the picture. Also under this heading: the Rummikub board.

The developer’s own pitch is that nothing extra has been bolted on around the puzzle. At 800 by 600 with touch support, it is a small, plain, unhurried field of produce. Next to it in the same group is the Connect Gold layout.

1. Scan the field for two tiles carrying the same fruit or vegetable.
2. Check that the route between them is not blocked by other tiles.
3. Click the two to link them and clear both from the field.
4. Open lanes through the middle early so later matches have somewhere to travel.
5. Keep linking until the field is empty.

• Think in lanes — on a Shisen Sho field like Fruit Mahjong the gap between two tiles decides the move as much as the picture does.
• Clear the edges first — outer tiles open the routes that inner matches need.
• Group by colour — the produce art sorts by palette far faster than by outline.
• Take the plain board slowly — PotatoJam left the extras out, so the linking is the only thing to attend to.